Federal Hall National Memorial

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0:00:06.6 Dr. Elizabeth Macaulay: So you know how everyone always says George Washington slept here? We’re standing on a place where actually George Washington stood on a very particular day.

0:00:14.1 Dr. Steven Zucker: When we think about Washington and we think about the federal government, we think about Washington, D.C., but in fact the initial capital, the place where Washington himself was inaugurated, was in New York City.

0:00:25.0 Dr. Elizabeth Macaulay: One does have to remember that New York was the original capital.

0:00:28.6 Dr. Steven Zucker: This is the oldest part of New York City, the part that the Dutch had settled.

0:00:32.5 Dr. Elizabeth Macaulay: This is where Wall Street, the first stock exchange in the U.S. was founded. This is where the ships coming in from the Caribbean, the ships coming in from Europe, would come and sell goods and then buy American natural resources and other American goods and take them back. This was really the birthplace of the U.S.’s economy and in many ways a lot of the political fervent that led to the American Revolution.

0:00:53.3 Dr. Steven Zucker: We’re looking at a building that looks like a Greek temple, but this is not the building where Washington was inaugurated. That took place at a building that pre-existed this one, but on this location.

0:01:04.1 Dr. Elizabeth Macaulay: And that building was the British City Hall that had replaced the earlier Dutch City Hall. Now we don’t really know very much about this building, but in order to get ready for Washington’s inauguration, the building really got gussied up.

0:01:18.5 Dr. Steven Zucker: And the person responsible for that was a French-born engineer named L’Enfant, who’s probably most famous for laying out the design of Washington, D.C.

0:01:26.9 Dr. Elizabeth Macaulay: He had the job to monumentalize this building. And so from our understanding, he added a very grand portico and pediment on the second story so that there would be an impressive setting for Washington to be sworn in.

0:01:39.3 Dr. Steven Zucker: And he chose as his architectural vocabulary that of the classical tradition of ancient Rome and ancient Greece. And that was in part because those cultures were seen as having given birth to the ideals that the United States was founded on, the ideas of liberty and democracy.

0:01:55.6 Dr. Elizabeth Macaulay: And so those elements were there in kind of the second phase of the original building. But then when we come here to see what is now called Federal Hall, which is not its original name, but actually, in fact, the Customs House.

0:02:07.1 Dr. Steven Zucker: But it does look a little oddly out of place. We’re looking at a building that would, at first glance, seem to be more at home on an acropolis in Greece rather than in this financial capital of the United States.

0:02:18.0 Dr. Elizabeth Macaulay: Well, and that’s exactly right. It basically is an American interpretation of the Parthenon, the most famous building in Greece.

0:02:25.2 Dr. Steven Zucker: And that’s a Doric building. And we see lots of Doric forms here. Above the large ceremonial staircase, we see these very stout Doric columns. As is traditional with the Doric, they have no feet. They have very shallow, broad flutes. And we have the simplest of capitals.

0:02:42.5 Dr. Elizabeth Macaulay: And we have triglyphs and metopes in the entablature up to the pediment. And one thing we have to think about is the fact that America, which really was this democratic experiment, said we need an architecture that reflects this, that conveys that we are a democracy.

0:02:59.9 Dr. Steven Zucker: Well, think about what the choices were. One could either choose a medieval style like the Gothic or the Romanesque. Or one could look at the palace architecture of Europe. But one was based in the religious, and one was based in the old, corrupt powers of Europe. And so both of those styles were rejected.

0:03:16.3 Dr. Elizabeth Macaulay: So it gives the American nation an opportunity to articulate in architecture its ideals.

0:03:22.1 Dr. Steven Zucker: The building was constructed in the 1830s as a customs house. That is, as a place where goods that were being brought to the United States could be inspected and taxed.

0:03:31.1 Dr. Elizabeth Macaulay: By the 1830s, 95% of the U.S. Federal government’s income came from customs duties.

0:03:37.0 Dr. Steven Zucker: There’s lots of bustle out here. Let’s go in. We’ve walked up the steep stairs through the porch and into the building. And you’re immediately greeted by something very unexpected, this broad, round rotunda.

0:03:50.9 Dr. Elizabeth Macaulay: You come in, and what you’re struck by is a huge oculus providing light and the dome above you, which is so unexpected because you can’t see it from the outside. It is a great surprise.

0:04:01.5 Dr. Steven Zucker: And instead of recalling the Greek tradition as the exterior did, here we have echoes of the Roman tradition.

0:04:07.6 Dr. Elizabeth Macaulay: We feel like we have just walked into a modified version of the Pantheon, this big, elevated, and very grand space.

0:04:16.0 Dr. Steven Zucker: You have a sense that the architects, principally Town and Davis, were thinking about the symbolic use of the architecture of antiquity, that the United States was the inheritor of the great traditions of classical Greece and classical Rome. And we see lots of details that hark from those architectural traditions. We see delicate dentils along the top.

0:04:37.3 Dr. Elizabeth Macaulay: We also see rosettes and roundels decorating the area just below the oculus.

0:04:41.9 Dr. Steven Zucker: And we see palmettes everywhere.

0:04:43.3 Dr. Elizabeth Macaulay: You have to remember that there were plays put on for George Washington’s troops that were about Cato the Younger. He was viewed as being like Cincinnatus, the epitome of what a Roman general and statesman should be.

0:04:53.8 Dr. Steven Zucker: We’re seeing here on this site, in the two buildings that have occupied this site, the shaping of an architecture for the new United States.

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Alexander Jackson Davis on the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History

Francis Morrone, “The Custom House of 1833–42: A Greek Revival Building in Context,” Classical New York: Discovering Greece and Rome in Gotham, edited by Elizabeth Macaulay and Matthew M. McGowan (New York: Fordham University Press, 2018).

Louis Torres, “Federal Hall Revisited,” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, volume 29, number 4 (1970), pp. 327–38.

Catherine Hoover Voorsanger and John K. Howat, editors, Art and the Empire City: New York, 1825–1861, exhibition catalogue (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000).

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